I would really appreciate your answers to a few questions, to help me plan for the next few months.

Where should we go?

I have gone through spells of concentrating for a week on one country. Did it with Greece. Did it with Italy.  I did a series of France on Friday, and that title still pops up once in a while. Most recently, because of current events, I’ve been talking about books that take you to the Middle East and Arab countries.

I sense that you may be getting tired of that area–although I still maintain that it is important. Am I sensing right? Do you want to move on?  Where do you want to go next?

If you have a particular country you want to learn about, check the Destinations tab and see what we already have. [A reader has pointed out that is not a good way to check, because it just delivers a long list of posts--if you are looking for a specific place, type in the name of the country, city, region in the search box, OR go to the Search by Category list if you just want to check a list of everything we've covered--most posts are categorized by post.] Want more? Let me know? Something missing entirely? Let me know that, too. You can choose more than one.

NOW THE QUESTIONS

(polls)

WINNERS

Congratulations to the latest winners of books from A Traveler’s Library.

Rosemary Carstens of the wonderful Feast online magazine, wins Cara Black’sMurder in the Latin Quarter.

Donna Hull, famous diva of baby boomer travel, wins the new book Mothers and Daughters.

In case you are wondering why I am not giving away every book I talk about

1. Some of the books come from the library. The librarians would frown upon my giving them away instead of returning them.

2. Some of the books are ones that I buy with the intention of adding them to my own Traveler’s Library. Those are the somewhat tatty, dog-eared ones that you would not want anyhow.

3. And  I am occasionally reading a book in electronic form. Try as I may, I can’t figure out how to give you those electrons. I now have both a (Free) Kindle app for my netbook and I have set up my brand new Sony e-reader that I recently won in a contest at Wandering Educators. (The Sony is similar to Kindle’s latest,smallest reader, but without Wi-Fi to download books). It is helpful when I can let you know when books are available in digital form, because I notice that more of the readers of A Traveler’s Library are using Kindles, Nooks, etc.

The very appropriate illustration above–locations of famous stories around the world, comes from Flickr, and from an equally appropriate place for this post. It comes from South America–an area we have not covered a lot. As usual, I urge you to click on the picture and see more of the photographer’s work.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

First Poll

I asked what TYPE of POSTS you prefer.  Your answers surprised me just a little bit, because, this is, after all, a site that reviews lots of books. But you still would rather I talk about my personal travel experiences. Actually, I suspected that last year, and have been trying to squeeze in travel narrative as often as possible.

Not as many people chose movies, or author interviews as I expected, either. But I do appreciate that many people commented that they like the mix of types of articles as it is.

• Here are the results on the first poll:
• Personal travel narrative 41.67%
• Book Review                           27.78%
• Movie Review                          8.33%
• Photo Post                                 8.33 %
• Following those, in this order, were: Author Interview, Giveaway, Other. Web Roundups got a BIG FAT ZERO.

Second Poll

The other surprise was that although traffic is generally pretty good for posts about children’s books, not one person chose them–or romances. But the opinion was split pretty evenly between the first ranked four types.

So, the results were as follows:

History/biography           21.43%

Literary(General) fiction 21.43%

Mystery/Thriller novel    19.05 %

Memoir                                    14.29%

Following that, Cook Books and Guide Books tied, and two people suggested “travel essays” and “interesting cemeteries”. Hmmm, could be the author of a book on cemeteries might have voted?

Thank you for your participation, and this is your opportunity to get the last word in. Agree with the outcome or disagree? particularly if you didn’t get to vote the first time around. Never too late to express your opinion at A Traveler’s Library!

———–

And now, DRUM ROLL–the winners of the first two books given away this month.

Connie Ong gets the fine novel set in Damascus, The Calligrapher’s Secret, which since you didn’t win, you can buy by clicking on this Amazon link.

Laura, of Quintess, a luxury travel club, won A 1000- Mile Walk on the Beach. And if you’ve been waiting and didn’t win that one, you can buy it by clicking on this Amazon link.

————–

You still have the rest of the day to enter the drawing for the collection of Paris guides, and through next Wednesday to win one of the two Bhutan books. Go to those posts to see the rules.

————-

Planning a trip to China? I wrote a review of Culture Smart China, a newly revised version of the indispensible cultural guide over at Indie Travel Podcast. Take a look. Press the “Like” button. Leave a comment. (The review is a little lonely right now and needs some friends.) I’ll give this to someone who follows the instructions in this paragraph, provided they come back to the Traveler’s Library comment section and tell us what they did. (U.S. Resident, over 18 only.)

Next week at A Traveler’s Library, we’ll take a look at a video of Afghanistan, review a book about Mexico City and learn about a totally free –well come back next Friday and see what is free (plus get the name of another 2 winners in our periodic giveaways.)

Please note two additions that I hope you will find helpful.  At the top of the far right column, I added an Amazon search bar. I hope that you’ll enjoy using it to find what you want to purchase at Amazon, or simply to find information.

Second, I added a Buy Now button beneath the image of the book cover for Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist. I will get my shipment momentarily, and if you want to see the 170 beautiful images and read the fascinating life story of Quincy Tahoma, you can buy it directly from my co-author, Charnell Havens and me, and we will ship it postage free within the continental United States. Drop me a note if you have any questions.

Photos are from Flickr with Creative Commons license. You can learn more about them and their photographers by clicking on the pictures. Winners of books at A Traveler’s Library are chosen with Random.org among all eligible comments.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

You have some more time to suggest a movie or book that you would recommend to someone who wants to learn about the place you live.

Three places outside the U.S. have been added so far: India, London England and New Zealand. Want to see how many U. S. states have been added? Here’s a map, with added states in gray/blue.

Week Two Road Trip

Because several states have been mentioned numerous times, there are still a lot of empty spaces. Don’t be left out. Erase those yellow spaces.

Add your place to the road trip by answering the VERY SHORT survey and give us a book or movie that represents YOUR place.

To keep track of how the results are coming in, subscribe by RSS or e-mail. All new subscribers this month have a chance to win a copy of The Last Aloha or An Irreverent Curiosity (both reviewed here).

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Three places outside the U.S. have been added: India, London England and New Zealand. Want to see how many U. S. states have been added? Here’s a map, with added states in maroon.

Week One Road Trip Places on the Map

Don’t be left out.

Add your place to the road trip by answering the VERY SHORT survey and give us a book or movie that represents YOUR place.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Baja California Sud beach

When Vice President Joe Biden warned people to stay home because of the H1N1 flu, and travel writer Peter Greenberg responded that he was going to happily travel to Mexico on empty airplanes and stay in empty hotels, we decided to ask readers if they agreed with Joe or Peter. Or perhaps they wanted to wait and see. You can see the results of the poll now, but here’s a hint. Travelers visit A Traveler’s Library.

Mexico suffered more than any other country from the flu epidemic, and their tourism industry suffered mightily. I’m thinking about Mexico now because I’m reading a book about Baja Mexico, which I will be talking about here soon. I was intrigued to see that Peter Greenberg’s newsletter (and web site) revisited the question of Mexico and the flu. San Diego announced an event to promote Baja California tourism.  And the U. S. State Department dropped their Travel Advisory against travel in Mexico as of May 15.

Personally, although I live near the border, in a U.S. town that was part of Mexico until the mid 1850′s, I have not traveled widely in Mexico. One wonderful week in Guadalajara and two memorable trips to the village of Mata Ortiz in Chihuahua, which I wrote about at Velvet Escape’s Blog. That’s it. In the next few days, I want to talk about some books that I read several years ago about Mexico, and then a newer book about Baja in the  hope that you have not abandoned Mexico as a possible destination.

Photograph by Giandomenico Pozzi, from Flickr.

Have you traveled in Mexico?  Have you read about Mexico?  Share your experiences here, please.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Travel writer Peter Greenberg says Biden was sending the wrong message, and he, personally, is going to Mexico on those nice empty planes and stay in those nice empty hotels. A couple of days ago I wrote a post about a book for travelers to  Mexico and I called the post  ” Can’t Go? Read About Mexico.” Was I wrong? I got curious.  Where do the readers of A Traveler’s Library come down on this debate?

Are you traveling? Are you staying home? Please take the poll and let everyone know where you stand, sit or lie down with a cold compress on your head.

(NOTE: Poll is CLOSED)

Get your friends to vote, too.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.